


a poppy made of ink

by scorpiod



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Bloodplay, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Suicidal Thoughts, season four au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod
Summary: There's another way out, Katherine offers. Or, Elena can't get Katherine out of her head.





	a poppy made of ink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hecate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/gifts).



> This is slightly AU in places but mainly goes AU after 4x06.

_And now it’s in you, secrecy._  
Ancient and vicious, luscious  
as dark velvet.  
It blooms in you,  
a poppy made of ink.  
”  
— Margaret Atwood, _Secrecy_

The first night she meets Katherine, Elena dreams about her, thrown back into the Salvatore boarding house with her, the two of them regarding each other, like mirror images, but flesh blood and bone.

Katherine’s finger on her collarbone, her nail digging into her skin. They leave little crescent moon marks on her body, like a brand.

 _You’re asking the wrong questions_ , she whispers, leans in close enough to put their lips together and just breathe into each other’s mouths. 

Less a dream, more of a nightmare—it picks and pulls at her bones, tugging at her spine, Katherine’s hands and fingers under her skin, pushing up from under her, Elena caught somewhere between revulsion and arousal.

Elena wakes up, hands to her throat, looking for Katherine’s fingers, for her marks, any evidence, but all she finds her is her own fluttering pulse, trapped like a frightened butterfly. 

*

The first time she tasted blood was just a drop, a sip, not enough to _fill_ , to sate her hunger or whet her appetite— 

Just enough to keep her alive. 

_Was it like that for you?_ she asks Katherine later on. 

Katherine smiles, a small slow curling of her lips that look like Elena’s lips, but stained in red, smiling like she was recalling a fond memory. Her eyes go dark with hunger and it shudders through Elena’s body, watching her own eyes turn on her like that, wondering if she’ll ever master that gaze. 

_No. I feasted. But it’s all the same in the end, isn’t it?_

It’s all about survival.

*

Go back. Rewind. 

At this point in time, Elena is not a vampire yet but a desperate, frightened girl, and all she wants to claw some information out of Katherine, ply it out of her with sweet words and a bottle of blood. 

Blood is the only thing that mattered; that was something they both understood. 

Katherine and her, side by side, separated only by some magic barrier between them, that may as not well have existed in that moment, as Katherine regales her with horror stories of what happens when Klaus gets to you—Elena could smell how rank Katherine had become in the tomb, close enough to reach out and touch her hair, stringy and brittle with lack of care, life draining from her body as she starves, desiccates. 

“You know what would really get me talking?” Katherine says, her voice low, weakened and throaty. She leans in, close as she can. Her eyes are heavy-lidded. Her skin translucent, like a ghost. “Some doppelganger blood would really help me remember, loosen my lips.” 

Katherine can hear her heartbeat. She doesn’t say that, but Elena knows it, in her bones—that awareness of another predator, when Katherine looks at her, knowing she was _hungry_. 

“No,” Elena says, getting up. “You tell me what I want or you don’t get anything.”

Katherine sighs, slumping against the wall, defeated. 

_There’s another way out_ , she tells her later, and Elena feels revulsion deep in her guts, squirming around her insides. She steels herself, back against the wall, as if she can pull away from her own body, her own image, place her mind elsewhere, and not look at the blood running down Katherine’s wrist. 

She doesn’t say no.

*

Here is another nightmare Elena has—Katherine tugs her in, breaks through the barrier and grabs her by the throat.

 _You’re not human_ , Katherine tells her with blood eyes and sharp teeth. _You just a doppelganger, a reflection, a copy. You’re not even real_.

Katherine shoves her blood down Elena’s throat, wrist cut, Katherine’s skin and heat against her mouth. Elena drinks it willingly, gulping it down, grabs Katherine’s wrist and holds it hard against her mouth, until the blood runs over her chin and cheeks, dripping down her throat, leaving Elena gasping and moaning for more.

Elena wakes up then, cold sweat, heart throbbing in her chest, tears in her eyes, trembling and wet between her legs like some horrified twisted response to stimulation, a flood of adrenaline spiking through her veins while she slept. 

She gets up early and cleans around the house, making coffee for morning at three AM, windexing the windows at this hour, dusting the TV den. She cleans until she forgets all about her dream that night. 

She can’t go back to sleep after that.

*

Elena drinks her droplets of blood, her bare minimum, and clings to life, as always. _I was ready to die_ , she says but her body says different—built for survival at all costs.

She roars like a feral beast when Rebekah smears blood all over her chin. She drinks deep from Matt’s wrist and dreams of tearing into his throat. She stabs her brother in the neck and tries to feast on his blood. 

It’s all violence and survival. There was a time before this where life was something more, but her body doesn’t remember. 

*

Elena’s nightmares become real when Katherine pops up in the waking world. 

“Go away,” Elena says, huddled in a ball, hands over her ears. _Shut up shut up shut up._

“I’m not like you,” she says, recounts all the ways she is different from Katherine: she’s younger, her hair is straight, she only feeds when necessary, she doesn’t like killing (except, for how, she enjoyed snapping Connor’s neck, the way it felt under her hands, the sharp crack as she knew what she’d done). 

Katherine slinks behind her back, her arms around her waist. Her breath is hot against her neck. She’s as real as Elena is, if only for the moment.

Katherine slides her hands up under her skirt, leans in close and kisses the side of her neck, soft, tender, and wet. “No—you’re worse.”

Elena doesn’t even flinch.

Katherine disappears again, leaving her alone with the shadow memory of her hands, all over her, deep in her insides, pulling at her guts.

 _The scary thing_ , Katherine's voice rings out through the room, Katherine's hand on her belly, Katherine's hair falling into her face, _isn't becoming a monster. It's learning who you are_.

*

It won’t stop. 

_It wont stop it won’t stop it won’t stop it won’t stop._

*

Elena runs into the night, ready to end it all, runs to the place where she should have died a year ago, the place that keeps trying to pull her and drown her where she rightfully belongs: at the bottom of the river, in her would-be final resting place.

Then there’s a tug at her neck, pulling her back, yanking Elena hard on the ground. Elena chokes. She lands on the hard concrete, looking up into the face of who pulled her away from the bridge. 

Her own face meets hers back.

“Miss me?” Katherine tells her, breaking into a sharp grin, eyes bright and shining in the darkness.

Elena spits at her. “Go away.” 

“Ugh, you should be thanking me,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m here to help you. Put your necklace back on, the dawn is coming.” 

*

Katherine is real. 

Katherine is real and solid and alive.

*

Katherine doesn’t take her back home. She doesn’t take her anywhere she recognizes, driving her out of town, the sun turning the sky a light blue as the morning comes.

“Are you kidnapping me?” Elena asks, fiddling with her necklace. Still thinking of taking it off, letting herself burn up in the car, her remains carried on the wind. Maybe she’ll set Katherine on fire too, taking her with her.

The thought brings a rueful smile to her face.

“You’re free to leave,” Katherine says, as they park in front of a motel. Katherine walks up the steps to a room, doesn’t look back at her. “I won’t stop you.”

Elena hurries along after her. The hotel is shabby, run down, the yellow neon light of the sign flickering on and off. _The Mystic Inn_ , but the _M_ and _T_ were dimmed. The stairs were steel, solid, if ugly to look at. Katherine opens door labeled _214_ and lets it nearly slam on Elena’s face, her arms flying out to catch it as Elena hurries along inside. 

Inside isn’t much—puke yellow wallpaper and ugly floral pattern of the bed, small mini fridge by the bathroom, the smell of stale coffee in the air. Not terribly welcoming. Who knows how long Katherine had been here.

Katherine throws a towel at her when they walk in. “Clean yourself up,” she tells her, curt. 

Elena catches it easily, but she doesn’t get in the shower just yet. She steps closer to Katherine, eyeing her up and down. She reaches out, placing her fingers against cheek, stroking the skin there. She’s not cold, but she’s not warm either, a bit like a reptile, cold blooded. Her cheek is soft to the touch, Elena notes, running her fingers down her chin and to her throat, her collarbone. For a moment, Katherine is caught off guard, drawing in a small intake of breath, her eyes widening.

Katherine chuckles, her voice throaty. “Did you forget how shower too? Do you need help, sweetheart?” 

Contempt drips from her voice and Elena flinches away like she’d been burned. 

Not a hallucination, then. Not anymore. Katherine’s real now.

She goes in the shower, turning on the hot water. There are no images of blood running down into the drain, no messages on the wall, no string of victims watching her from behind the mirror. Katherine doesn’t follow her in, like she expects her to, doesn’t pop up behind the shower curtain to tell her what a monster she is now.

Somehow, that’s a little disappointing. 

*

Katherine brushes her hair after.

Elena sits on the edge of the bed, still wrapped in a towel, clinging it tightly to her body, still dripping from the shower. Katherine is careful with her for once, running her hands and fingers through the strands, careful brushes, one section of thick hair at a time. Elena closes her eyes, relaxing into it, forgetting who those hands belong to for a moment. 

“Why are you helping me?” she asks softly.

Katherine _tsks_ at her, a parody of a big sister. “I’m not,” she says. She takes a section of hair into her hands and slowly combs it out, getting all the knots out, getting it smooth and straight under her hands. “Should I put you in braids?” Katherine asks, chuckling to herself.

“Then why are you here?” Elena asks, straightening up. She should run. She should leave, get her clothes back on and get out of here. 

The image of Jeremy’s dead eyes, his neck bleeding out from where she stabbed him, pop into her head. Connor’s face in the mirror, Stefan’s eyes not recognizing her, the bathroom covered in blood with _killer_ scrawled in the mirror. The hotel bathroom was smaller and smelled moldy, with the smell of rotting wood coming from the walls, but it felt safer here, away from the people she loves.

“I know how to find a cure,” Katherine whispers in her ear, running her hands through her hair until Elena shivers. “Interested?”

Elena doesn’t answer, but Katherine already knows what she’s going to say.

When Katherine’s done, her hands linger on her shoulders. Elena is suddenly aware of her long nails against her skin, not pressing or digging in, but sharp and dangerous. 

“Don’t you look nice?” Katherine says, sugar sweet, and leans in to lightly kiss Elena’s temple. 

*

Elena sleeps in the same bed with Katherine that night, ignoring the missed calls and frantic texts on her phone. 

Twice she checks her voice mail—Jeremy calling in, voice quick, telling her how they fixed it, she’s cured now; Bonnie stressed and asking where she is; Stefan telling her she’s worried; Damon telling her to come back home.

She tosses it out the window, shattering as it hits the payment.

There are no more hallucinations. No dreams about Katherine, bloodied or otherwise, no nightmares. 

Just the cold reality of Katherine’s body next to her own, and some strange kind of peaceful silence in her head.


End file.
